Executing javascript script after ajax-loaded a page - doesn't work

Question

I\'m trying to get a page with AJAX, but when I get that page and it includes Javascript code - it doesn\'t execute it.

Why?

Simple code in my ajax page:

Answer 1

When you update your page by doing something like setting a container's innerHTML to some updated content, the browser simply will not run the scripts in it. You can locate the <script> tags, get their innerHTML (IE may prefer innerTEXT), and then eval() the scripts yourself (which is pretty much what jQuery does, though it finds the scripts with a regex before updating the DOM).

Answer 2

In case some other people stumble upon this old thread, there is one issue with the accepted answer by Deukalion, there is one issue that may have been overlooked: as written, the script only looks for the first script tag. If multiple script tags exist, all others are overlooked.

A few minor tweaks would resolve the issue. Change one line from:

    var script = content.match("<script[^>]*>[^<]*</script>");

To:

    var script = content.match(/<script[^>]*>[^<]*<\/script>/g);

And another from:

    script = script.toString().replace('<script type="text/javascript">', '');

To:

    script = script.join("").replace(/<script type="text\/javascript">/g, '');

Now it will gather all the <script> code and execute them in the order found on the page. Otherwise it was an excellent solution.

Answer 3

After the AJAX request, you can make an "on success" function which can take the returned html and do something with it. Then something will be executed.

If there was a code example, then I could provide a code solution to the situation. But using just standard xmlhttprequest, the following could be done:

xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET","ajax_info.txt",true);
xhr.onreadystatechange=function()
{
if (xhr.readyState==4 && xhr.status==200)
  {
  document.getElementById("myDiv").innerHTML = xhr.responseText;
  }
}
xhr.send();
​

Answer 4

Use this function:

function parseScript(_source) {
    var source = _source;
    var scripts = new Array();

    // Strip out tags
    while(source.indexOf("<script") > -1 || source.indexOf("</script") > -1) {
        var s = source.indexOf("<script");
        var s_e = source.indexOf(">", s);
        var e = source.indexOf("</script", s);
        var e_e = source.indexOf(">", e);

        // Add to scripts array
        scripts.push(source.substring(s_e+1, e));
        // Strip from source
        source = source.substring(0, s) + source.substring(e_e+1);
    }

    // Loop through every script collected and eval it
    for(var i=0; i<scripts.length; i++) {
        try {
            eval(scripts[i]);
        }
        catch(ex) {
            // do what you want here when a script fails
        }
    }

    // Return the cleaned source
    return source;
}

then do parseScript(xmlhttp.responseText); when you're replacing/adding content.